Tags: 2008 predictions, psychics
January 19, 2009 | lists, weird news
We now return you to our regularly scheduled program already in progress. (CLICK HERE FOR PART ONE OF 2008 PSYCHIC PREDICTIONS THAT WERE HILARIOUSLY OFF THE MARK).
2008 CELEBRITY PREDICTIONS
Hollywood fuels the psychic trade to the same extent it does Scientology and drug rehabilitation clinics. The best paid in the business are “psychics to the stars”, who hold seances in Bel Air mansions invoking the spirit of Coco Chanel and assure an anxious Dr. Phil that the general public will remain in the dark about him for at least one more year. When it comes to the end of the year and fans everywhere want to know what the next 365 hold in store for their favorite celebs so they can reorganize their lives accordingly, these upper-tier psychics are sure to turn up on television with their grocery list of predictions. Everyone will forget these over the 12 months to follow, during which most if not all of them will have been proven wrong.
Of course, if we were going to get all Vegas bookie-minded about the psychic business, we’d have to say that celeb predictions are probably second only to natural disasters as the safest bet for a sooth-sayer. First, as mentioned, the audience for this sort of crapola can’t remember what they just ordered through the drive-thru clown’s head speaker and is unlikely to remember what some charlatan medium had to say while testing the legs on one of Montel Williams’ loungers.
Along with short attentions spans, the repetitive nature of celebrity news also favors a lazy psychic. Celebrity marriages will crumble. Others will result in an instant narcissist of a child with a name that sounds like a brand of exotic coffee. There will be: DUI’s; drug busts; weapons-related offenses; celebrity sex tapes that may or may not have been circulated by the person featured; grown-up child actors whose road to ruin will be covered; some celebs will start a fashion label, while others will call their agents and ask what’s the money like in reality television.
It’s predictable, or so you would think:
Sylvia Browne correctly guessed this woman's gestation period.
First let’s start off with Sylvia Browne, one of Montel Williams favorite guests who is not on a day pass. We may have been unduly negative about Sylvia in the first part of this blog. We praised StopSylvia.com and may have used the terms hideous crone in reference to her. Perhaps we were too hasty. A quick look at Sylvia’s celebrity predictions reveals one off the top that she got right:
Sayeth Sylvia: Jamie Lynn Spears, 16-year-old sister of Britney Spears, will have her baby.
And you know what? She did! In June! Sylvia baby you got the sweetest sooth in town. But wait… Sylvia the revelator made this stunning prediction on December 31, 2007. News about the Spears sister being 12-weeks pregnant broke about 10 days before that and she made it pretty clear that it was her intention to see the pregnancy through. Unless Jamie-Lynn was looking to wow the world of science with a 12-month-plus long pregnancy, the odds are pretty good that she would have popped before the year’s out. OK, Sylvia, we’ll give you that one, but how about some others:
Sylvia said: “Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie will adopt another child, but the couple will not stay together.”
Wrong, and wrong again. Brangelina gave birth to twins, didn’t adopt another kid, and are still together. It was a nice try as Angelina tends to adopt children from the duty-free at airports and Brad Pitt must tire of trying to get all the names straight, but, alas, it didn’t happen Syl. We shall return to Lady Browne the All-Seeing later on in this blog.
Astrologer to the stars Susan Miller predicted: Jamie Lynn Spears’ career will ‘take off like a rocket’…but it won’t be with Nickelodeon!
Nikki, a Toronto-based “psychic to the stars,” gave us this hatrick of celebrity predictions that missed the mark entirely:
George Clooney will get married and have a child. Penelope Cruz will run for political office in Spain, and Sean Penn will be wounded in a visit to the Middle East. Nope, nope, and, uhmmm, right – nope. Reasoning behind these guesses: George Clooney is a playboy who drinks and they usually tend to marry somebody for at least a weekend — the child bit was a strech; the Penelope Cruz bit seems like a bizarre stab in the dark; and anybody who goes to Iraq these days has a fair-to-middling chance of having their ass shot off in that country.
Richard Gere: the talented actor is set for a huge comeback, said Jennifer Angel of the New York Daily News. Huh? Didn’t Gere already make what could be considered a comeback in ‘07 with the Bob Dylan inspired “I’m Not There” (despite his portion of that being the worst) and the entertaining The Hoax? But ‘08 was a write-off. We, along with everyone else we know and every 10 people removed from them didn’t see “Nights in Rodanthe,” which screened for several nights and we’re guessing in not too many places other than Rodanthe.
2008 NATURAL DISASTERS PREDICTIONS
Levi and earthquakes go way back.
Predicting how mother nature will beat the living snot out of the red-headed stepchild that is humankind is one of the most effective weapons in the get-rich-being-a-psychic start-up kit. Psychics have been feasting off mother nature’s fury ever since Nostradamus saw a commode getting frequented too often at an orgy and predicted the ensuing flood. They are often that obvious. If we predict that some natural disaster or another will befall Indonesia and an earthquake hits right on schedule that does not make us a pair of Canadian Kreskins, but just that we have a firm grasp of the obvious as that is the kind of country that regularly sees its citizens legging it for higher ground. If we predicted a tsunami in Saskatchewan and that happened, well we’d be charging admission to peak through curtains at us at the county fair.
As Mark Edward (it’s a safe bet he’s no relation to one of our all-time least favorite TV people Jon Edward) on Skepticblog wrote:
“It’s not that difficult if you have nothing else to do all day. Utilizing collected information culled from Googling, almanacs and seasonal demographic breakdowns makes predicting natural disasters like hurricanes, floods and great storms stiil a safe bet, but who wants to hear about all that on Montel?”
“I don’t feel like we’re going to have a big hurricane season this year,” said “Dr. Rob” (of the Florida town half-full of psychics we mentioned in part one). According to the Farmer’s Almanac, the 2008 hurricane season was the third busiest on record since 1944 and “one of the most damaging in history.”
Psychic Levi writes: “Instead of a long detailed list of quakes I will give you a few zones to watch for now but will update coming earthquakes through my blog.” Welcome to the age of the Internet psychic who can update his predictions quicker than we can delete something we posted here while we were drunk. How generous of Levi as well to touch on a “few zones.” Why be so specific? Why not just discuss possible developments somewhere on the planet Earth, or better yet, the known universe?
Levi does narrow things down though with: Indonesia and surrounding areas are becoming very unstable and should have been scientifically monitored last year. We cannot stop earthquakes but we can save lives by relocating people from priority danger zones. The government of Indonesia let out a collective gasp upon hearing of this revelation and have begun contact with the world of science. Levi’s insights are piercing.
Soothsayer and seer Barbara Garcia challenges Levi for the mantle of vaguery with: “It is a turbulent year in natural disasters particularly tidal waves, possibly a tsunami.” Maybe yes, maybe no — maybe rain, maybe snow.
(Thanks to LiveScience for pointing to the following). Volcanoes are always a popular one for scientists to toss into a batch of predictions as they make for stirring mental imagery and a bunch are bound to blow every year, so they’re safe enough, But psychic medium Michael R. Smith took it a step further by stating that a “a major supervolcano is poised to erupt, sending ash all over the Earth, affecting world-wide political and economic systems. It will blow Mount St. Helens away in terms of magnitude, and an eruption may occur in the Washington state or British Columbia area.” Smith claimed this was “… special area where I seem to be especially accurate.”
What will 2009 hold in store for us? Might someone who got knocked up in late 2008 give birth in 2009? We do not possess the mystical credentials to answer such questions, but we’ll be back next year to see how our favorite psychics did.
rofl
And part two is wonderful as well!!!
“Volcanoes are always a popular one for scientists to toss into a batch of predictions”
Are you referring to the psychic scientists? ;-)
I *loved* the article!